As a nation dies slowly

Two decades on, Amma Ariyan has lost none of its evocative power and political relevance

CONTEMPORARY RESONANCE: Released in 1986, Amma Ariyan remains a masterpiece

Early in Amma Ariyan, Purushan enters a hospital in Calicut where he has come to identify a dead body. As he walks in the hospital compound looking for the mortuary, we can hear the seething cries of a newly born child. It is not coincidence, for this death of a former acquaintance would midwife the birth of a new movement.

It becomes clear in Amma Ariyan, or Report to Mother, that the mother is a metaphor for something much larger, the nation itself. Purushan has set out to Delhi to pursue his research, promising to write to his mother from wherever he is. After finding the dead body of a person he faintly recognises, which is later revealed to be that of Hari, he decides to go to Hari’s house to inform his mother about her son’s death. The film takes the form of a letter written by Purushan to his mother.

Amma Ariyan therefore becomes the account of those who have been left outside the system and the narrative of the nation that promised to embrace all its citizens. On the way, Purushan meets some of Hari’s friends and they join the journey. Director John Abraham traverses the memory of this group to unravel the character of Hari, and this is closely interwoven with the turbulent political history of Kerala in the 1970’s. Brilliantly shot in black-and-white, the film weaves fact and fiction (Abraham filmed actual protests) to create a powerful narrative of political unrest faced with an increasingly corrupt and oppressive state.

Towards the end, the group finally reaches Hari’s mother to give her the news. Soon we find that the group has metamorphosed into a crowd, which Abraham uses to suggest that the journey begun by Purushan will not end here. The ending of the film could be seen as the people finally uniting to question those in power, but critics have often wondered if Abraham prophetically was satirising the de-ideologised tamasha of political activity which never endeavours to investigate and demolish root causes of oppression.

In one memorable scene, the travelling group reads from Guatemalan revolutionary Otto Rene Castillo’s poem Apolitical Intellectuals – “One day the apolitical intellectuals of my country will be interrogated by the simplest of our people. They will be asked what they did when their nation died out slowly, like a sweet fire small and alone.” This is of immense resonance in an age such as ours when civil society begins to speak the language of power instead of representing the concerns of the subaltern.

Amma Ariyan was released in 1986 as the first film of the Odessa Collective, which obtained the funds by collecting money from the ordinary people of Kerala. An example of effective cooperative filmmaking, the film also serves as a reminder of the social and political possibilities of cinema once it is let loose from the hegemony of business and power interests.

This review was published in Mise en Scene, the journal of the 2nd Women’s Film Festival in Chennai.